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... Look, I'm a DRUMMER. I don't REALLY need to know all this THEORY stuff. But let me tell you: the next time I get together and jam with my friends, for the first time in my life, I am going to have at least SOME understanding of what the hell the guitar players and keyboardists are talking about. Yeah, allright, you might play by ear like Paul McCartney and Jimi Hendrix, too - as do I. ... But if you want to UNDERSTAND what Zappa KNEW like the back of his hand, then you NEED to know some Music Theory. You can start with this cool litle book! It makes a handy reference, especially when you can brag to your Music Major friends that NIRVANA were the masters of the art of "Fortepiano" ( "Loud, immediately followed by soft." ) ... YOWZA! - The Aeolian Kid
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Each lesson is easy and fun, and each chapter has a vocabulary list, folllowed by a realistic conversation between the speakers, which uses vocabulary words from the list. The conversations are connected, creating a kind of story line as you go through the book. The last chapter is an epilogue in Russian describing the fate of the characters you've come to know throughout the book.
I would listen to the lesson on the tape and follow along with the book a few times, then I could listen to the tape in the car a few times. When I felt confident, I'd move on to the next lesson. It is very feasible to finish this entire course in three months, and feel ready to travel to Russia and hold normal conversations!
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Having read a fair number of these stories, his comments are quite accurate (most of what was published by Gernsback is awful dreck, but there were a few important stories published too).
If you have any interest in the this early era of SF this is an essential book for the shelf. And it's fun to read the plot summaries of some absolutely dreadful stories!
Nonminated for the 1999 Hugo for Best Related Book (previously the Non-Fiction category).
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The << Seashore>> is an essential member of the First Discovery series and deserves to be put back in print. There is no doubt many people (and libraries) would like to have a complete set of these titles.
These First Discovery books never cease to amaze. They pioneer the innovative technique of the "double sided overlay", a brilliant illustrating tool which brings excitement and almost dynamic movement to story telling.
The concept of the Seashore book is to emphasise the interface between land and sea, and that place where man and nature interact. The environmental message is strong eg. " Always replace the stone in the same place when you look in rock pools".
The overlays allow us to see the top and bottom of a crab in great detail. We also see inside the hermit crab's shell and the time he does his house-moving!
If you love to eat shell-fish, you will adore the pictures of the oysters, mussels and scallops. By turning the page you see inside the shell. They look good enough to eat. By the way, why do so many chefs discard those gorgeous roes on scallops?
The scene of the wading birds (curlews and oystercatchers) is done particularly well, We get an "underground view" of the burrowing molluscs and the long curving beaks of the birds at the surface hunting for their supper.
The illustrator's art is at its most brilliant when we are looking at a curtain of brilliantly colored seagrasses. There is something lurking behind here. Turn the page and you are face to face with a moray eel.
Track this book down or lobby the publishers to re-print it. It deserves to get a wider audience.
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The selection is judicious, but ungenerous. The volume should have been three times this length. As it is, we get fewer than 30 poems on 118 pages, and most of the poems are short. Worse, "L'expiation" is excerpted - and even this excerpt is cut! I guess space was the publisher's overriding concern. SARCASM ON. After all, why should a publishing house give much more than 100 pages to the greatest poet the world has known, when there is such a demand for 200-300 page volumes devoted to [insert name of contemporary no-talent here]? SARCASM OFF.
Credit to Haxton for his generally sensitive work. Why more people aren't translating Hugo, I don't know. All we have now are Haxton himself (sensitive but quick to cut), Harry Guest (intellectual but a little prosaic - and out-of-print), and the Blackmores (pedestrian). Allons, poets!
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